• U.S. arms sales, security partnerships to suffer as a result of sequestration cuts

    One area where sequestration-mandated budget cuts will be felt sooner rather than later is U.S. support for foreign militaries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Training and security partnership engagements with allies will likely decline as well as the Defense Department must now operate with a $46 billion cut in its budget for fiscal 2013.

  • Tech companies, telecoms clash over cybersecurity executive order

    Last August a cybersecurity bill died in Congress amid partisan bickering. On 12 February this year, President Obama packed many of that bill’s elements into a cybersecurity executive order. To make the order more acceptable to some of its congressional and industry critics, the president introduced an exemption which would take large technology companies off the list of companies subject to the new cybersecurity standards. This exemption placated some of the original cybersecurity bill’s critics, but angered others, chief among them telecommunication companies.

  • Marburg drug shows promise

    Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a severe and highly lethal disease with no effective treatments, and it has been classified as a Category A bioterrorism agent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Sarepta Therapeutics announced positive results from a non-human primate study of AVI-7288, the company’s lead drug candidate for the treatment of Marburg virus infection.

  • U.S. nuclear industry resists stricter, post-Fukushima safety measures

    Since the March 2011 Fukushima disaster, members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have been debating whether or not to impose even stricter safety measures on the thirty-one U.S. boiling water reactors (BWRs). Utility companies have been fighting any new safety regulations, arguing that the security measures they have are more than enough.

  • Bipartisan proposal makes gun-trafficking a federal crime for the first time

    Lawmakers yesterday introduced a proposal to toughen federal penalties for people who illegally purchase firearms for someone else. The bill would make gun trafficking a federal crime for the first time, with penalties of up to twenty years for “straw purchasers.” The bipartisan proposal is an indication that Democrats and Republicans are exploring areas of agreement to reduce gun violence in the United States.

  • Enabling small ships to launch and retrieve long-endurance UAVs

    About 98 percent of the world’s land area lies within 900 nautical miles of ocean coastlines. Enabling small ships to launch and retrieve long-endurance UAVs on demand would greatly expand the U.S. military’s situational awareness and ability quickly and flexibly to engage in hotspots over land or water. DARPA is seeking companies to develop these systems.

  • Corpus Christi police wants new recruits to be Army Strong

    The Corpus Christi Police Department wants to make it known that if you are an Army veteran coming home, they have a job waiting for you.

  • Two top North African terrorist leaders killed in north Mali

    The two top leaders of the Islamist militant insurgency in North Africa, Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abdelhamid Abu Zeid, were killed over the weekend by a contingent of Chad soldiers, which are part of the African coalition forces fighting Islamist militants in north Mali. The two Islamist leaders were killed in fighting in the rugged Adrar des Ifoghas mountain range of northeastern Mali, where the Islamists, who had controlled north Mali since April 2012, have escaped after France began its military campaign against them in mid-January.

  • Norfolk, Virginia, tries to cope with sea-level rise

    Norfolk, Virginia, is home to the largest U.S. naval base in the country, and the second biggest commercial port on the U.S. Atlantic coast. Floods are an ever-present problem, a problem which has become worse in recent decades. The relative sea level around Norfolk has risen 14.5 inches (.37 meter) since 1930, when the low-lying downtown area routinely flooded. The frequency of storms-induced surges has increased as well.

  • New proposals to Iran aim to slow down Iranian nuclear “breakout”

    In two days of talks with Iranian representatives, the P5+1 powers offered Iran a new set of proposals which show a subtle shift in the powers’ position: rather than making it impossible for Iran to produce weapon-grade uranium – by shutting down the Fodro centrifuge farm and demand that Iran ship the uranium it has already enriched to 20 percent out of the country – the new proposals aim to make it more difficult, and slow, for Iran to develop weapon-grade uranium. The assumption undergirding the latest proposals is that if the process of producing weapon-grade uranium would be slowed down, it would be easier for Western intelligence services to discover it, and for military intervention to stop it, before a bomb is being produced.

  • DHS official in charge of immigrant removal resigns

    On the same day it was reported that hundreds of illegal immigrants facing deportations were released from federal detention because of upcoming sequestration-related budget cuts, the senior DHS official in charge of arresting and deporting illegal immigrants announced his retirement. The administration says the retirement of the official, Gary Mead, is unrelated to the decision to release the detainees.

  • RFI for cybersecurity framework for critical infrastructure

    In his 12 February 2013 Executive Order, President Obama called for the development of a Cybersecurity Framework to reduce cyber risks to critical infrastructure such as power plants and financial, transportation, and communications systems. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) the other day issued a Request for Information (RFI) in the Federal Register as its first step in the process to developing that framework.

  • Iran developing plutonium-based nuke capability

    While the world is focusing on Iran’s enriched-uranium nuclear weapons program, evidence has emerged to show that Iran has embarked on a project to make plutonium-based nuclear weapons. This plutonium weapon project is taking place at a facility from which IAEA inspectors have been barred for eighteen months now. Detailed satellite images show that Iran last month has activated the Arak heavy-water production plant, located 150 miles south-west of Tehran. Satellite images of the area around the Arak facility show that numerous anti-aircraft missile and artillery batteries protect the plant — more such missile batteries than are deployed around any other known nuclear site in Iran.

  • Rhode Island bill would require gun owners to register their weapons

    A proposed bill in Rhode Island would require gun owners to register their weapons with local or state police, and would also allow police to file copies of applications for gun purchases sent to them for background checks.

  • iPhones can reveal a lot about their owners to law enforcement

    People assume their iPhones are safe to keep their personal information on. They would be dismayed to realize what law enforcement agencies can find about them on their phone.